Open World Games That Needed Fast Travel

Key Takeaways

• Open-world games may lack fast travel, posing challenges for completion and exploration.
• Games like Batman: Arkham Knight and Jak 3 would benefit from fast travel options for collecting hundreds of items.
• No Man’s Sky and The Legend of Zelda also lack fast travel features, affecting players’ navigation across their expansive worlds.

Games set in an open world have been a staple for over twenty years now and one of the most useful abilities to have is fast-travel. Whether it’s exploring a sprawling city or an alien planet, having the ability to simply teleport back to a hub world or a base of operations is nice for those who don’t feel like backtracking.

With that said, occasionally, developers create games that do not feature fast travel. It may not ruin the game by any means, but gamers would have appreciated to at least have the option and they would prove to be vexing at times when trying to complete certain quests or just simply exploring to find collectibles.

8 State Of Decay 2

Roaming A Zombie-Infested World Can Get Stressful

Part of what makes State Of Decay 2 so thrilling is that it doesn’t hold the player’s hands when it comes to surviving a post-apocalyptic zombie-infested open world. It forces players, both solo and co-op, to scavenge and survive however they can, and to its credit, the idea is effective in that it makes the zombies feel like a genuine threat to endure.

That doesn’t stop players from wishing there was an unlockable way to quickly teleport back to their camp in State Of Decay 2. Thankfully, vehicles can make the long treks back to camp better, but even that can lead to arduous zombie encounters and other fuel struggles going across the six open-world maps.

7 No Man’s Sky

Galactic Explorers Should Remember To Keep Their Ships Close

Using portals, players can teleport from a space station to their base in No Man’s Sky, but those don’t help when exploring the many massive alien planets. If a player is on the opposite side of the planet from their base, there is no convenient way to get back to it if there is no way to get to the ship, which is part of the challenge of being a survival game.

Still, a craftable gadget that allows someone to teleport to their base would be appreciated. Thankfully, starships are pretty fast in No Man’s Sky, but they are not always able to be called and sometimes the trek back to the ship can be just as dangerous as adventuring outward to whatever quest the player was up to.

6 Dying Light

Fighting A Zombie Apocalypse With Hardcore Parkour

Parkour is the main gimmick of the Dying Light games, so it makes sense that the developers wanted players to hone their traversal skills. With that said, it is a good thing that Dying Light 2 added a fast travel system, as the first game direly needed it at points due to the massive map with no other way to get around other than running, jumping, and climbing.

On the one hand, it helps make the infected in Dying Light some of the scariest zombies to be chased by. On the other hand, free-running to opposite sides of the map depending on the mission is taxing on a player’s patience, when the sequel proves that the fast travel does not take away from the well-crafted parkour gameplay.

5 Batman: Arkham Knight

The Batwing Could Have Been A Fast Travel Vehicle Again

On the one hand, Batman: Arkham Knight features the fastest gliding ability in all the Batman: Arkham games as well as the Batmobile, so traversing through Gotham City is still the fastest in the series. However, that doesn’t stop players from sometimes wishing that they could use the Batwing for immediate transportation, a la Batman: Arkham Origins.

Fast travel would have been most helpful in the post-story portion in which players are trying to beat every side quest in Batman: Arkham Knight. The quest that needed the most would have been the arduous process of collecting every Riddler trophy and solving his every challenge, especially when it came to backtracking to interior levels like the Arkham Knight HQ and the movie studios.

4 Jak 3

Getting All Precursor Orbs Is No Easy Feat Without Fast Travel

In Jak’s third adventure, exploring a massive open world, fast travel would seem like a logical addition. Jak 3, however, stuck to the same formula that requires the player to traverse every inch of the world for collectibles, either on foot or in a vehicle, which is no less fun, but like in a lot of 3D platformers, the backtracking gets to be a little much if looking just for one single Precursor Orb.

Jak 3 not only has the Wasteland to explore from top to bottom, but also Spargus, Haven City, the sewers, and more, with up to 600 orbs to collect overall. Some orbs require going back to certain NPCs, thus making the need for a quick return to the cities even greater, even if the worlds are fun to explore.

3 Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order

Backtracking Is The Worst Part Of Cal’s Journey

To a degree, the Metroidvania-esque approach that Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order takes renders the game unfit for fast travel, but that still makes it frustrating to experience. From the customization of the main character, Cal Kestis, to the Soulslike lightsaber combat, it does many things well, but even die-hard fans of the game disliked the lack of fast travel, hence why it was added in the sequel.

Certain chests can only be accessed by the end of Fallen Order and require traversing across the entire maps of planets like Kashyyyk and Dathomir to get them. Even with a few shortcuts, there is no convenient way to get through the planets without arduous treks through platforming challenges and puzzles, and the same goes for heading back to Cal’s ship, the Mantis.

2 Batman: Arkham City

Fighting Crime In Gotham City Can Feel Like A Chore

Even with the Grapnel Boost upgrade unlocked, the map in Batman: Arkham City is sometimes a chore to progress through. It makes for main story missions and time-sensitive quests like dealing with Zsasz to restrict players to gliding through Arkham City, but going from one side to another for a single collectible or a Titan canister only to make another trek to the other side is tiring.

Unlike Arkham Knight, Batman: Arkham City features no vehicles for Batman to use, so players are stuck running across rooftops in a large portion of Gotham City. In certain areas, such as the Steel Mill and Wonder Tower, they suffer from the same problem as Arkham Knight, with multiple side quest activities in and outside them.

1 Vampyr

London’s Districts Are A Maze Of Derelict Alleys And Streets

With choices that can change or end stories drastically, Vampyr is the Mass Effect of vampire games, with Jonathan Reid being one of the best vampiric protagonists. As fun as it is to freely roam the city of London in 1918, one of the biggest drawbacks to Vampyr is the backtracking through different districts as they are quite large with many alleyways and streets.

If Focus Entertainment and Dontnod ever made a sequel, it could feature some vampire ability for players to teleport with. Vampyr essentially forces the player to do everything possible in one night before progressing. It’s considered one of the few flaws with Vampyr because there are safehouses throughout London that could have acted as fast travel points.